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This story follows the first in Jenn’s Rediscovered series, Last Assault on Oak Island.
The accommodations didn't bother Lauren until the next morning when she was trying to choke more water out of the dribbling showerhead. She mumbled a curse, acutely reminded of an off-Tokyo visit last year where their seamy facilities had rivaled third world lodgings.
The morning passed slowly. They found Lewkowicz's shop easily enough, just off the main street. He was indisposed at the moment, so Carlos and Lauren spent the time investigating his establishment.
Padolski was accurate in describing the museum-antique shop. Lewkowicz predominately exhibited furnishings in period room settings, and artwork in two gallery halls, resembling a mini-museum in which a browser might purchase a favorite grouping.
She explored the first room leisurely as Carlos remained at the front desk. New Era pottery and later carpets made up the bulk of the setting. The earliest pieces were Neolithic phials in silver alongside bronze Corinthian helmets. The latter made her recall the Damascene silver suit of armor at the chateau auction.
Her tour continued. A Romano-Hungarian Aphrodite. Ptolemaic busts of white and green marble. A headless statue of Sylvanus. Behind these carefully hung Tabriz and Sarouk rugs from the late nineteenth century. She wondered if the sculptures were genuine or replicas, or perhaps side-door purchases with doctored provenances.
She paused at the deep blue Mereze prayer rug. It was the senior carpet of the display by thirty years. The arched octagonal mehrab design showed signs of slight wear and one lower corner was damaged by an un-repaired fray. Even in this condition, it demanded the highest price of the rugs.
Below it was displayed a papyrus fragment. Lauren leaned closer to the glass case. Eight lines of hieratic inscription were carefully printed in black and red inks, dating to the New Kingdom. In the next case was a collection of fragments. She frowned at the description card. Lewkowicz, or whoever had documented the parchments, claimed the fragments were part of the Psalms Scroll and Temple Scroll.
She grew skeptical. A flood of miscellaneous thought bounded into her mind. The Essenes and Masada. The Wadi Qumran caves and Bedouin shepherds. The Six-Day War of 1967. The frenzied search through Old Jerusalem and Bethlehem by Israeli forces.
She realized her fingers were pressing on the glass. She removed them, shaking her head. They had to be forgeries, even if the price listed on the card reflected the authentic articles. Lewkowicz wouldn't display fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He could easily sell them to Jerusalem's Shrine of the Book or the Rockefeller Museum, even the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Any number of universities and libraries would be only too happy to relieve Lewkowicz of the fragments, and many would give a passing nod at any provenance he offered—with the right lab test results.
If authentic.
She decided they must be forgeries. Had to be. As she turned, Carlos moved closer to the case. His glasses reflected the indirect lighting as he studied the fragments.
"Unbelievable," he murmured. His breath clouded the glass as he leaned to read the card's description. "Movlatn. He passed away just recently."
"Are they forgeries?" She knew he couldn't answer the question without complete paleographic and lab analysis. "Palimpsests, at the least?"
Now his fingers were on the glass. "Possibly. Very possibly they are genuine. Once the Bedouins who discovered the scrolls found that they were paid by the fragment, they tore the scrolls into pieces to create more fragments, therefore larger profits." He frowned at the square Aramaic script on the Temple Scroll fragments. He straightened, removed his eyeglasses and rubbed his eyes. "If these are genuine, our friend Lewkowicz is a well-connected fellow."
"Why hasn't he sold them?" She shrugged. "There are half a dozen institutes in California alone that would take them without question. What about us?"
He took her arm and ushered her slowly out of the room. "Gustalav was right when he said some treasures need completion. This is very true of the Dead Sea Scrolls. What kind of exhibit are so few fragments? Not much."
"That doesn't explain why he still has them." She shook her head, glancing back the room as they left it.
"They may be recent purchases."
She hadn't considered that. "I don't see why he displays them at all. A few calls to the Israel Antiquities Authority would produce immediate buyers."
He nodded, amused at her interest. "I don't think Lewkowicz is a man who advertises. His clients find him. Padolski never actually said he had the amber panels; only that Lewkowicz was a good prospect." A crooked smile crossed his face. "I believe Zig Lewkowicz has passed many rarities through the front, and back, doors of this establishment. Perhaps we can send him a little business in this matter."
Lauren passed the rest of the morning watching Carlos pace before the line of tall marquetry case clocks. After an hour, she was about to speak when the clocks promptly chimed noon in echoing unison. He hurried away from the swelling noise.
The assistant caretaker, as the shop clerk called himself, looked to the waiting Americans from the counter.
"I am sorry, Herr Professor," he said in nasally German. He hung up a phone Lauren didn't recall hearing ring. "Herr Lewkowicz has a sudden appointment this afternoon."
Carlos beat Lauren to the clerk's walnut counter. The younger man flinched from the curator's proximity.
"I am making an appointment to see Herr Lewkowicz tomorrow at nine o'clock. In the morning," Carlos added in a biting tone that surprised Lauren. "Tell him we're here for the panels."
The clerk's affront changed to confusion. "We have no panels. You know that. You have been here all morning." His stance took on a haughty tilt. "We have several Oriental folding screens, if that is what you are seeking."
"It is not," Carlos said with restraint. Lauren took his arm. His balding head was reddening. "Give Herr Lewkowicz my message. He will know."
She pulled harder on his arm. "Come on, Dr. Sheldon."
It took just over an hour to reach Krakow from Lewkowicz's shop in Tarnow. Reuben easily found the Jagiellonian University. As Poland's oldest academy, dating to the mid-fourteenth century, the buildings were largely converted to advance tourism rather than education.
He parked and crossed the vaulted courtyard of the Collegium Maius, an envelope clutched tight in his hand. He only hoped Marta Brandenburg was still with the laboratory staff. He went inside, gave the visitor attendant a name he knew would give him access, and threaded through the ornate hallways until he found the lab he'd last seen her working in half a year ago.
She was there, and, as it was the lunch hour, she was alone with her work. Reuben couldn't have hoped for more.
She spotted him softly closing the door to the immaculate lab inside the depths of what was left of the science department. A smile crossed her angular face.
"You only come around when you need something," she accused, then added pointedly, "tovarisch."
He returned her sourness with a charming smile. "You're going to be difficult."
"I am going to be expensive," she corrected.
He put the envelope on the sealed graphite table near the counter where she was working. "I would like the results as soon as possible."
Marta turned and leaned across the table to him, but didn't take the envelope. "I would like to go to dinner."
He knew this routine. She always did it to him. He glanced at the brass clock on the wall. "It's only two."
She withdrew and went back to the microscope she had been at when he came into the room. "I'll get to it."
He knew the role he was to play as well as she did. He just never knew why she insisted on it. He rounded the table and stood by her side, watching her adjust the lens. "You don't have anything on the slide."
She caught the smile as it tried to form. "Of course I do. It is too small to see with the unaided eye. That's why I use this, neuch."
"You wound me."
"No, but many would, if they knew you were here." She abandoned the scope and made an exaggerated pout. "It's been six months, comrade." She held her face near his.
"One day someone is going to take you up on your idle teasing." He watched her chestnut eyes narrow cat-like.
"Not you?"
"Not me." He grinned at her. "If you recall, I tried that once."
"I remember."
They both broke into a friendly laugh. She leaned on the counter beside him. "Ivan doesn't use my lovers for experiments in the basement anymore."
"He just breaks their necks quickly now?"
When Marta mentioned her professor husband, Reuben knew the mock flirtation was over and she would get down to the business at hand.
"You haven't been around lately," she said seriously. "I know you've found trouble. You always do."
"Nothing I can't get out of."
"Or have you found another obliging laboratory?"
"Not in Poland."
She smiled, a hint of the teasing returning. "I won't recognize what I find, will I?"
"Have you ever, Marta? No. You're too young."
She nodded. "What have you brought?"
Marta was always the same. Acting like a slighted lover, taunting him in ways that would lead a casual observer into believing they had shared moments outside the pristine lab. He had met her first by accident five years ago, expecting Eischmidt's colleague for tests one evening. It took an hour to see through Marta's frivolous charade of aggressive coquetry.
During which he had been soundly slapped. Twice. As it happened, the former head of the laboratory services had been dismissed for matters never made clear to Reuben. On that initial occasion Marta had wiled him into letting her run the tests he wanted. For a fee. Fortunately, she was absurdly ignorant of history.
She understood the information he wanted, nodding as he spoke, holding the piece of amber he gave her up to the fluorescent lighting.
"Pretty. Who chopped it up?" She frowned at the oval of amber cut in half, leaving only one side of the two etched rosebuds in the center.
"A Prague lab. You're going to do the same."
She looked at him fondly and held out her hand.
He took it and kissed the back of it.
"You fool." She turned her attention to the amber. "You know what I want."
"I do."
She sniffed the sample. "You dig this out of a tomb or something?"
"Or something." He watched her shrug. "How much?"
"If it's been to Prague, why do you need me?"
"Because, Marta, you are the love of my life and I needed to see you." He moved closer, knowing the tactic was limited to words only. Lengthy contact was forbidden. She would slap him. Or club him. Probably with something fatal, too.
"You're a horrible flirt. You should stop." She frowned at his nearness to a set of slides. "It will take me two hours. Now go away before you break something expensive."
He folded his arms to demonstrate control. "How much, Marta?"
She was scraping the inside of the amber etching into a glass dish, her mind on her new project, nearly unaware of him. "You can afford it. Go away. Two hours, love."
Watch your inbox for more chapters as Dr. Sheldon and Lauren try to stay ahead of competitors and mercenaries as they crisscross Europe following rumors of the lost Amber Chamber.
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